Rainmen come up big

The Halifax Rainmen had an eye on both their frontcourt and their future at Monday night’s National Basketball League of Canada draft.

The Rainmen, flush with picks for the three-round draft in Markham, Ont., chose a pair of six-foot-eight forwards with their first two trips to the podium, then acquired a 2014 first-rounder from the Windsor Express in a prearranged deal for their next two picks.

With two first-round selections, the Rainmen nabbed Raven Barber third overall and made Gerard Devaughn the fifth overall pick.

“We think we got the two best players in the draft by far and they’re some big boys,” Rainmen owner Andre Levingston said.

“They’re young guys but we think they can make an immediate impact because they’re so big and athletic.

“These are a couple of guys we’d like to keep for a number of years to develop them. We think they can be stars in our league.”

Barber, 21, averaged 5.0 points and 2.9 rebounds last season in 32 games with the Mount St. Mary’s Mountaineers, an NCAA Division I team in Maryland.

“I can bring excitement, high energy and a positive attitude,” the native of Edgewood, Md., said shortly after the draft.

Gerard Devaughn, a 25-year-old out of Division II Stillman College in Alabama, split last season between Bolivia and the Indiana Diesels of the Premier Basketball League.

“I’m very excited to be with this organization,” said Devaughn, who was a PBL first-team all-star. “I’m looking forward to coming to do what I can to contribute to help this team win.”

Halifax picked forward James Marcellus in the second round and guard Jason Dawson with their first of two third-rounders, then shipped both players to Windsor.

“We have a number of guys that we’ve come to terms with that we’re really excited about and we weren’t really looking to bring in too many more picks from the draft,” Levingston said.

“So we just tried to position ourselves to be able to get some good picks for next season.”

With his last pick, the seventh selection of the third round, he chose five-foot-10 point guard Keoni Watson, a 29-year-old Idaho product. Watson played last season in China and with the Texas Surge of the American Basketball Association.

The Rainmen could begin to announce free-agent signings as soon as today, Levingston said. Teams were permitted to come to terms with players but couldn’t officially sign them until the conclusion of the draft.

The expansion Ottawa SkyHawks made Toronto point guard Alex Johnson out of North Carolina State the first overall pick.

The league’s other new club, the Brampton A’s, had the No. 2 pick and selected swingman Brent Jennings out of Southern Polytechnic State.

Former St. Francis Xavier forward Bol Kong went fourth overall to the Mississauga Power. Manock Lual, a one-time UPEI Panther, went 11th overall to Ottawa.